Spanish runner
Mohamed "Mo" Katir El Haouzi (born 17 February 1998)[1] is a Spanish middle- and long-distance runner. He won the bronze medal in the 1500 metres at the 2022 World Athletics Championships and the silver medal in the 5000 metres at the 2023 World Athletics Championships. Katir took silver in the 5000 metres at the 2022 European Championships. He holds three Spanish records (1500 m, 3000 m, 5000 m), is a two-time national champion, and is the European indoor record holder for the 3000 metres.
Biography
Born in Ksar el-Kebir, Morocco, Mohamed Katir was raised in Mula, Murcia, Spain since he was 5 years old.[2][3][4] While Katir had previously run as a Spaniard in youth competitions and won a Spanish national cross championship,[5] he acquired Spanish citizenship in October 2019, after a 4-year long process.[6]
In May 2021, Katir won his first Diamond League event, securing victory in the 5000 metres at the Grand Prix Gateshead in United Kingdom.[1] In June and July, he broke three long-standing Spanish national records in just a 33-day span at the Diamond League meetings. First on 10 June, he ran a new 5000 m record of 12:50.79 at the Golden Gala in Florence, Italy.[7] Less than a month later, at the Herculis meet in Monaco, he set Spanish record in the 1500 metres, finishing second behind only 2019 world champion Timothy Cheruiyot who set a personal best in the race. Katir's 3:28.76 ranked him as the 10th fastest of all time, just eight hundreds of a second off the European record.[8][9] Four days after that, he won the 3000 metres in Gateshead, United Kingdom with a time of 7:27.64, breaking Haile Gebrselassie meet record in the process. His time ranked him as 15th of all time at that distance.[10] At the end of the year, Katir won the San Silvestre Vallecana 10 kilometres road race in Madrid, setting yet another national best mark and becoming the first domestic winner of this race since 2003.[11]
On 15 February 2023, Katir set the European indoor 3000 m record at the Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais in Liévin (in a race where Lamecha Girma set a world record) with a time of 7:24.68, slicing more than six seconds off the previous mark held by Adel Mechaal since 2022. His time surpassed the European outdoor 3000 m record of 7:26.62 and was inside the previous world indoor record of 7:24.90 set by Daniel Komen in 1998.[12][13]
On 7 February 2024 it was announced that Katir had been provisionally suspended by the AIU for a doping violation due to missing 3 doping tests in a year.[14]
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